A federal judge on Thursday tossed out porn actress Stephanie Clifford, better known as ‘Stormy Daniels’, and declared null and void the confidentiality “hush money” agreement they reached after their sexual adventure scandal.
District Judge James Otero has ruled that Daniels’ suit is irrelevant because she had already “received exactly what she wanted” when Trump and his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen decided not to apply the pact in September. Otero has rejected Daniels’ request declaring the confidentiality agreement invalid.
The fourteen-page sentence comes a year after Daniels’ lawsuit against Trump over a sex scandal that continues to politically and legally threaten the president.
The Attorney General’s Office in New York has confirmed that Trump ordered Cohen to make an illegal payment of $ 130,000 to Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election to buy his silence for an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight crimes, including breaking federal election law when making those payments.
When Cohen testified before Congress last week, he issued a check for $ 35,000 signed by the President in August 2017, one of 11 payments Trump has made to reimburse him.
Otero’s decision opens the possibility that Daniels may be forced to return the $ 130,000 to Cohen. For his part, Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, has celebrated the judge’s decision. “Judicial rates and sanctions in favor of the president add up to $ 293,000, with which Trump has achieved an overwhelming victory.”
Otero previously sentenced Daniels to pay Trump $ 293,000 in court fees in 2018 when he filed another complaint filed against him. Hader has assured that Daniels has not yet paid to Trump and that the president does not have planned to request to Cohen that returns the 130,000 dollars if Cohen resigns to ask them to Daniels.
Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has also sung victory despite the file of the complaint. “The court has shown that Mrs. Daniels received from Trump everything she asked for in her lawsuit, she has won and forced Trump and Cohen to give in,” he added.
From his account on the social network Twitter, Daniels recalled that Cohen and Trump initially threatened to make him pay up to 20 million dollars for damages arising from breaking the confidentiality agreement. However, they have changed their strategy and after Cohen admitted their crimes, they have assured that they have never executed the pact.
